SonoSite interviews Luis Enriquez, RN, for Code Black Movie

June 25, 2014

Meet Luis Enriquez of Code Black Movie

Luis Enriquez is a twenty-seven-year veteran Emergency Trauma Nurse at LA County USC Trauma Center. In addition to Clinical practice he serves as an Adjunct Clinical Instructor and lecturer. He is a graduate of LA County School of Nursing and California State Polytechnic University (BS Chemistry). Luis also is part of the Volunteer faculty with Good Samaritan Medical Ministry and has taught Emergency Nursing in Vietnam for the past three years. He has two grown children, Laura and Michael, with his wife Evelyn.

Virtually the only nurse to be featured in the film, Luis Enriquez holds a unique perspective on the film's message. As a trauma nurse, Enriquez shares with SonoSite his version of the story that Code Black movie tells. In fact, he claims the film does not depict his version of the story at all, the nurse's story.

This is a story about doctors. It's a truth through their perception about what was occurring there.

Particularly, Enriquez shares that emergency nurses play an important role in the emergency room, although they often remain unnoticed. The general assumption, in fact, is that nurses do the dirty meaningless work while the doctors make the real decisions and have actual impact in the medical field.

Luis Enriquez challenges this assumption that nurses are irrelevant or unimportant.

"These [doctors] come in. And we're there when they get there. And we're there when they leave."

Nurses are in fact an essential piece of the emergency room, especially because the work they do includes that which is essential for government purposes and that doctors don't have time for.

He was saying, ...'there's no thought of the documentation', and in the back...there's a nurse documenting, taking it all down.

Luis Enriquez also comments on the film itself and how it depicts the change in hospitals and the resulting change in environment.

Enriquez shares that with the change in hospitals, he felt a significant increase in the satisfaction of the place. "I have space. People have privacy. It's a far more humane place."

Code Black especially depicts this well in the documentary style of the film. Enriquez's experience with the film is additionally complex due to his being a member of the cast.

Enriquez is profiled in the film as a trauma nurse, and is filmed while working as well, to give an idea of what he does. He says of this role that he felt he had to act like a particular kind of person or nurse in order to depict his field well.

I feel I have to represent nurses well...because we often times...play the second fiddle to this drama.

Luis Enriquez, RN, displays his role as a nurse effectively in the film and in his exclusive interview with SonoSite.

Subscribe to our newsletter

By filling out this form you agree to receive periodic emails from Fujifilm SonoSite and its subsidiaries about product updates, events and education. You may unsubscribe from these emails at any time.